The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This year, I learned that Adams had written a 5th book to the series. I decided to re-read the whole series, since it had been so long since I read them, so that I could have the proper mind set when reading book 5.

Reflecting as I read is what inspired me to start this blog.

I loved the movie, by the way, but as is usually true, the book is astronomically better than the movie. Whether or not you liked the movie; if you like SciFi and humor, this book is a must read. It was a revolutionary piece of work in 1979. But I talk about that in my critique of the series, and this is about the book.

I don’t think I’ll give away too much plot to tell you that it starts with Arthur Dent trying to stop the road crew from tearing down his house to make way for a by-pass. This is, of course, simply a metaphor for what is about to happen to Earth.

Fortunately, his good friend Ford Prefect is really an alien from Betelgeuse. This is fortunate for Arthur, because Ford rescues him from death at the moment of Earth’s destruction. (Arthur didn’t know about Ford’s origins until about the same time as the earth was destroyed.)

Ford was on the planet as a journalist, contributing to a galactically popular reference book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ford had spent a decade on Earth to update the HHG’s entry about earth. He managed, in that time, to update the entire description of Earth from “Harmless.” To “Mostly Harmless.”

The rest of the story is a haphazard adventure of Arthur, Ford, the only other Earth survivor, Tricia McMillian, the President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and a chronically depressed robot, Marvin.

A lot of the humor is fish-out-of-water (i.e. Arthur off planet). Adams also does a very nice job of poking fun at the foibles of humanity and being British. Bizarre characters and situations add to the humor. He uses the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a very clever literary device; the book itself is a voice of omniscience. It knows just about everything about the universe, and Arthur and Ford often refer to it.

Weaknesses? Sometimes Adams meanders a bit, and his writing could be a bit more concise sometimes. To some extent this can be blamed on the farcical style of his writing, but I think mostly he could just get away with it in 1979, since he was writing on a new frontier; farce/humor/SciFi.

I'll give the book a 98. If it weren't such a ground-breaking book, I'd probably lop off a few more points for the literary weaknesses mentioned, but I have to give Adams a break for his courage to break new ground. Besides, the severity of his shortfalls is mild.